--- title: Vacation in Chernobyl | TIME description: Looking for a very unique tourist destination? Try Chernobyl, where you can tour the infamous nuclear disaster site. canonical: https://time.com/video/1el5csqT/ og:title: Vacation in Chernobyl og:description: Looking for a very unique tourist destination? Try Chernobyl, where you can tour the infamous nuclear disaster site. og:url: https://time.com/video/1el5csqT/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/1el5csqT/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Vacation in Chernobyl twitter:description: Looking for a very unique tourist destination? Try Chernobyl, where you can tour the infamous nuclear disaster site. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/1el5csqT/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Vacation in Chernobyl > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Vacation in Chernobyl [Watch (HLS stream): Vacation in Chernobyl](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1el5csqT.m3u8) (3:06)  _Published 2008-03-09. Looking for a very unique tourist destination? Try Chernobyl, where you can tour the infamous nuclear disaster site._ --- Jul 27, 2023 12:46 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Ukraine Battles Forest Fires Near Chernobyl Nuclear Plant](/video/iTo39BUJ/) ### Ukraine Battles Forest Fires Near Chernobyl Nuclear Plant [3 Tourist Destinations on the Rise](/video/hByTlBoX/) ### 3 Tourist Destinations on the Rise [Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Explosion Remembered 30 Years Later ](/video/MZg3Nn9V/) ### Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Explosion Remembered 30 Years Later --- ## Transcript >> The Ukraine capital Kiev, with its historic squares and shopping districts is no stranger to tourism. But this bus loaded with American tourists is traveling about 80 miles north of the city to a more unusual destination. Welcome to Chernobyl, the infamous nuclear power plant. Here on April 26th, 1986, nuclear reactor number four exploded. The blast equal to about a hundred of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima Nagasaki released a plume of radiation that reaches far as Western Europe. So it may seem surprising that the 19- mile exclusion zone surround the plant is beginning to emerge as a popular tourist destination. But for Chernobyl researcher Myron Stachiw, his expeditions served a purpose. >> It was a great deal of folklore and misperception about Chernobyl and about life in the zone. What's actually going on there, how serious is even walking through the zone. >> One of those misperception is that radiation levels in this zone are still dangerously high. >> The accumulation of the whole days worth of radiation in zone was probably no more than a dental x- ray. >> Indeed, the participants on this tour were warned that their biggest fear should not be getting cancer but rather falling into a neglected well. They step lightly as they walk through the deserted cities and work sites surrounding the Chernobyl plant. All of which were forcibly evacuated after the explosion. Perhaps the eeriest stop on the tour is the city of Pripyat, a soviet town that was built for nuclear plant workers and their families. Here stands a rusty Ferris wheel. It's a reminder that the ones thriving Pripyat is now nothing more than a ghost town. Still the exclusion zone is not entirely deserted. About 500 people continued to live in the villages. This 78- year- old woman, for example, moved back into her house about a year after the disaster. >> It was a home probably built by her parents. Her relatives are buried in the cemetery in that village. She goes somewhere else, she has nothing. >> But Stachiw is quick to point out that long- term residence like her are playing a risky game. >> It's dangerous to the people who spend lots of time there and who were actually live there. And as a result, the majority, let say up 60 percent of the population are radiated territories now is just pensioners. Many young people who have children have left the region. >> A more pressing danger is the threat of forest fires. The exclusion zones trees and soil are still contaminated with radiation. Forest rangers have been successful in maintaining the fire so far. But if another fire should break out, it would send another nuclear cloud into the air. Twenty- two years ago, steady wins blew most of the deadly radiation away from Kiev and its millions of inhabitants. Next time, the city might not be so lucky. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Vacation in Chernobyl","description":"Looking for a very unique tourist destination? Try Chernobyl, where you can tour the infamous nuclear disaster site.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/1el5csqT/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2008-03-09T20:56:36.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1el5csqT.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/1el5csqT/","duration":"PT3M6S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/1el5csqT/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```